Women sustaining forests in Uzbekistan

Mahbuba was carefully following the instructions of a traditional crafts master, looking from time to time at her cell phone which was placed on the table with the screen facing upwards: she had to make sure that her four children were okay. She had left them with her mother-in-law that morning and they agreed that if something happened, she would message her.

Mahbuba’s husband and his father left for Russia some time ago to find better jobs and she had become the de facto head of the household until the men returned home. Even if the men had been at home, she would not have left the children with them, because of social norms that prescribe domestic chore roles to women. It is highly unusual for Mahbuba to be away from home and she only leaves once a month to purchase household goods.

If forests are “dwindling”, how would the family survive on only a small, partial income from the sale of seedlings and fruit, and growing wheat and raising livestock?
But this time was different – this time she went to the district centre to join a three-day masterclass with 25 other women from Matmon and Jovuz, the highest and remotest mountainous villages of Kitab district in Kashkadarya province, to learn carpet weaving and how to make woollen blankets, clothing and souvenirs. Since her marriage at 18, she has been unable to attend university or vocational school because of her sizeable workload at home – looking after the children, maintaining a supply of water for drinking and the cattle, keeping the house warm in the cold season and undertaking the many other domestic chores typical of an average rural woman in her neighbourhood.

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